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BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST PASSAGE ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS OF NORTH CHAPTER I. — INTRODUCTORY.  WHAT
we
must consider an unusual piece of good fortune has enabled us to
present
our readers, under this head, with a narrative of very remarkable
character,
and certainly of very deep interest. The Journal which follows
not
embodies a relation of the first successful attempt to cross
the
gigantic barriers of that immense chain of mountains which stretches
from
the Polar Sea in the north, to the Isthmus of Darien in the south,
forming
a craggy and snow-capped rampart throughout its whole course, but, what
is of still greater importance, gives the particulars of a tour, beyond
these mountains, through an immense extent of territory, which, at
this
day, is looked upon as totally untravelled and unknown, and which,
in every map of the country to which we can obtain access, is marked as
"an unexplored region." It is, moreover, the only
unexplored
region within the limits of the continent of North America. Such
being the case, our friends will know how to pardon us for the slight
amount
of unction with which we have urged this Journal upon the
public
attention. For our own parts, we have found, in its perusal, a
degree,
and a species of interest such as no similar narrative ever
inspired.
Nor do we think that our relation to these papers, as the channel
through
which they will be first made known, has had more than a moderate
influence
in begetting this interest. We feel assured that all our readers
will unite with us in thinking the adventures here recorded unusually
entertaining
and important. The peculiar character of the gentleman who was
the
leader and soul of the expedition, as well as its historian, has imbued
what he has written with a vast deal of romantic fervor, very different
from the luke-warm and statistical air which pervades most records of
the
kind. Mr. James E. Rodman, from whom we obtained the MS., is well
known to many of the readers of this Magazine; and partakes, in some
degree,
of that temperament which embittered the earlier portion of the life of
his grandfather, Mr. Julius Rodman, the writer of the narrative.
We allude to an hereditary hypochondria. It was the instigation
of
this disease which, more than any thing else, led him to attempt the
extraordinary
journey here detailed. The hunting and trapping designs, of which
he speaks himself, in the beginning of his Journal, were, as far as we
can perceive, but excuses made to his own reason, for the audacity and
novelty of his attempt. There can be no doubt, we think (and our
readers will think with us,) that he was urged solely by a desire to
seek,
in the bosom of the wilderness, that peace which his peculiar
disposition
would not suffer him to enjoy among men. He fled to the desert as
to a friend. In no other view of the case can we reconcile many
points
of his record with our ordinary notions of human action. As we have thought proper to omit two
pages of
the
MS., in which Mr. R. gives some account of his life previous to his
departure
up the Missouri, it may be as well to state here that he was a native
of
England, where his relatives were of excellent standing, where he had
received
a good education, and from which country he emigrated to this, in 1784,
(being then about eighteen years of age,) with his father, and two
maiden
sisters. The family first settled in New York; but afterwards
made
their way to Kentucky, and established themselves, almost in hermit
fashion,
on the banks of the Mississippi, near where Mills' Point now makes into
the river. Here old Mr. Rodman died, in the fall of 1790; and, in
the ensuing winter, both his daughters perished of the small-pox,
within
a few weeks of each other. Shortly afterwards, (in the spring of
1791,) Mr. Julius Rodman, the son, set out upon the expedition which
forms
the subject of the following pages. Returning from this in 1794,
as hereinafter stated, he took up his abode near Abingdon, in Virginia,
where he married, and had three children, and where most of his
descendants
now live. We are informed by Mr. James Rodman,
that his
grandfather
had merely kept an outline diary of his tour, during the many
difficulties
of its progress; and that the MS. with which we have been furnished
were
not written out in detail, from that diary, until many years
afterwards,
when the tourist was induced to undertake the task, at the instigation
of M. Andre Michau, the botanist, and author of the Flora
Boreali-Americana,
and of the Histoire des Chenes d'Amerique. M. Michau,
it will be remembered, had made an offer of his services to Mr.
Jefferson,
when that statesman first contemplated sending an expedition across the
Rocky Mountains. He was engaged to prosecute the journey, and had
even proceeded on his way as far as Kentucky, when he was overtaken by
an order from the French minister, then at Philadelphia, rcquiring him
to relinquish the design, [page 45:] and to pursue elsewhere
the botanical
inquiries
on which he was employed by his government. The contemplated
undertaking
then fell into the hands of Messieurs Lewis and Clarke, by whom it was
successfully accomplished. The MS. when completed, however,
never reached M.
Michau, for whose inspection it had been drawn up; and was always
supposed
to have been lost on the road by the young man to whom it was entrusted
for delivery at M. M.'s temporary residence, near Monticello. Scarcely
any attempt was made to recover the papers; Mr. Rodman's peculiar
disposition
leading him to take but little interest in the search. Indeed,
strange
as it may appear, we doubt, from what we are told of him, whether he
would
have ever taken any steps to make public the results of his most
extraordinary tour; we think that his only object in re-touching his
original
Diary was to oblige M. Michau. Even Mr. Jefferson's exploring
project,
a project which, at the time it was broached, excited almost universal
comment, and was considered a perfect novelty, drew from the
hero
of our narrative, only a few general observations, addressed to the
members
of his family. He never made his own journey a subject of
conversation;
seeming, rather, to avoid the topic. He died before the return of
Lewis and Clarke; and the Diary, which had been given into the
hands
of the messenger for delivery to M. Michau, was found, about three
months ago, in a secret drawer of a bureau which had belonged to Mr.
Julius
R. We do not learn by whom i was placed there — Mr. R.'s
relatives
all exonerate him from the suspicion of having secreted it;
but,
without intending any disrespect to the memory of that gentleman, or to
Mr. James Rodman, (to whom we feel under especial obligation,) we
cannot
help thinking that the supposition of the narrator's having, by some
means,
reprocured the package from the messenger, and concealed it where it
was
discovered, is very reasonable, and not at all out of keeping with the
character of that morbid sensibility which distinguished the
individual. We did not wish, by any means, to alter the manner
of Mr. Rodman's narration, and have, therefore, taken very few
liberties
with the MS., and these few only in the way of abridgment. The
style,
indeed, could scarcely be improved — it is simple and very effective;
giving
evidence of the deep delight with which the traveller revelled in the
majestic
novelties through which he passed, day after day. There is a
species
of affectionateness which pervades his account, even of the
severest
hardships and dangers, which lets us at once into the man's whole
idiosyncrasy. He was possessed with a burning love of Nature; and
worshipped her,
perhaps,
more in her dreary and savage aspects, than in her manifestations of
placidity
and joy. He stalked through that immense and often terrible
wilderness
with an evident rapture at his heart which we envy him as we
read. He was, indeed, the man to journey amid all that
solemn
desolation
which he, plainly, so loved to depict. His was the proper spirit
to perceive; his the true ability to feel. We look, therefore,
upon
his MS. as a rich treasure — in its way absolutely unsurpassed —
indeed,
never equalled. That the events of this narrative
have hitherto
lain perdus; that even the fact of the Rocky
Mountains having
been crossed by Mr. Rodman prior to the expedition of Lewis and Clarke,
has never been made public, or at all alluded to in the works of any
writer
on American geography, (for it certainly never has been thus alluded
to,
as far as we can ascertain,) must be regarded as very remarkable —
indeed,
as exceedingly strange. The only reference to the joumey at all,
of which we can hear in any direction, is said to be contained in an
unpublished
letter of M. Michau's, in the possession of Mr. W. Wyatt, of
Charlottesville,
Virginia. It is there spoken of in a casual way, and
collaterally,
as "a gigantic idea wonderfully carried out." If there has been any
farther
allusion to the journey, we know nothing of it. Before entering upon Mr. Rodman's own
relation,
it
will not be improper to glance at what has been done by others, in the
way of discovery, upon the North-Western portion of our
continent.
If the reader will turn to a map of North America, he will be better
enabled
to follow us in our observations. It will be seen that the continent
extends from
the
Arctic ocean, or from about the 70th parallel of north latitude, to the
9th; and from the 56th meridian west of Greenwich, to the 168th.
The whole of this immense extent of territory has been visited by
civilized
man, in a greater or less degree; and indeed a very large portion of it
has been permanently settled. But there is an exceedingly wide
tract
which is still marked upon all our maps as unexplored, and
which,
until this day, has always been so considered. This tract lies
within
the 60th parallel on the south, the Arctic Ocean on the north, the
Rocky
Mountains on the west, and the possessions of Russia on the east. To
Mr. Rodman, however, belongs the honor of having
traversed this
singularly
wild region in many directions; and the most interesting
particulars
of the narrative now published have reference to his adventures and
discoveries
therein. Perhaps the earliest travels of any
extent made
in
North America by white people, were those of Hennepin and his friends,
in 1698 — but as his researches were mostly in the south, we do not
feel
called upon to speak of them more fully. Mr. Irving, in his Astoria, mentions
the attempt
of Captain Jonathan Carver, as being the first ever made to cross the
continent
from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean; but in this he appears to be
mistaken;
for we find, in one of the journals of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, that
two
different enterprises were set on foot, with that especial object in
view,
by the Hudson Bay Fur Company, the [page 46:] one in 1758, the
other as early as
1749;
both of which are supposed to have entirely failed, as no accounts of
the
actual expeditions are extant. It was in 1763, shortly after the
acquisition of the Canadas by Great Britain, that Captain Carver
undertook
the journey. His intention was to cross the country, between the
forty-third and forty-sixth degrees of north latitude, to the shores of
the Pacific. His object was to ascertain the breadth of the
continent
at its broadest part, and to determine upon some place, on the western
coast, where government might establish a post to facilitate the
discovery
of a north-west passage, or a communication between Hudson's bay,
and the Pacific ocean. He had supposed that the Columbia, then
termed
the Oregon, disembogued itself somewhere about the straits of Annian;
and
it was here that he expected the post to be formed. He thought,
also,
that a settlement in this neighborhood would disclose new sources of
trade,
and open a more direct cornmunication with China, and the British
possessions
in the East Indies, than the old route afforded, by the Cape of Good
Hope.
He was baffled, however, in his attempt to cross the mountains. In point of time, the next important
expedition,
in the northern portion of America, was that of Samuel Hearne, who,
with
the object of discovering copper mines, pushed north-westwardly during
the years 1769, '70, '71, and '72, from the Prince of Wales' Fort, in
Hudson's
bay, as far as the shores of the Arctic ocean. We have, after this, to record a
second attempt
of
Captain Carver's, which was set on foot in 1774, and in which he was
joined
by Richard Whitworth, a member of Parliament, and a man of
wealth.
We only notice this enterprize on account of the extensive scale on
which
it was projected; for in fact it was never carried into
execution. The gentlemen were to take with them fifty or sixty men,
artificers and
mariners, and, with these, make their way up one of the branches of the
Missouri, explore the mountains for the source of the Oregon, and sail
down that river to its supposed mouth, near the straits of
Annian.
Here a fort was to be built, as well as vessels for the purpose of
farther
discovery. The undertaking was stopped by the breaking out of the
American revolution. As early as 1775, the fur trade had
been carried
by the Canadian missionaries, north and west to the banks of the
Saskatchawine
river, in 53 north latitude, 102 west longitude; and, in the beginning
of 1776, Mr. Joseph Frobisher proceeded, in this direction, as far as
55,
N. and 103, W. In 1778, Mr. Peter Bond, with four
canoes, pushed
on to the Elk river, about thirty miles south of its junction with the
Lake of the Hills. We have now to mention another
attempt, which was
baffled at its very outset, to cross the broadest portion of the
continent
from ocean to ocean. This attempt is scarcely known by the public
to have been made at all, and is mentioned by Mr. Jefferson alone, and
by him only in a cursory way. Mr. J. relates that Ledyard called
upon him in Paris, panting for some new enterprise, after his
successful
voyage with Captain Cook; and that he (Mr. J.) proposed to him
that
he should go by land to Kamschatka, cross in some of the Russian
vessels
to Nootka Sound, fall down into the latitude of the Missouri, and then,
striking through the country, pass down that river to the United
States.
Ledyard agreed to the proposal provided the permission of the Russian
government
could be obtained. Mr. Jefferson succeeded in obtaining this; and
the traveller, setting out from Paris, arrived at St. Petersburgh after
the Empress had left that place to pass the winter at Moscow. His
finances not permitting him to make unnecessary stay at St. P., he
continued
on his route with a passport from one of the ministers, and, at two
hundred
miles from Kamschatka, was arrested by an officer of the Empress, who
had
changed her mind, and now forbade his proceeding. He was put into
a close carriage, and driven day and night, without stopping, till he
reached
Poland, where he was set down and dismissed. Mr. Jefferson, in
speaking
of Ledyard's undertaking, erroneously calls it "the first
attempt
to explore the western part of our northern continent." The next enterprise of moment was the
remarkable
one of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, which was prosecuted in 1789. He
started from Montreal, pushed through the Utawas river, Lake Nipissing,
Lake Huron, around the northern shore of Lake Superior, through what is
called the Grand Portage, thence along Rain River, the Lake of the
Woods,
Bonnet Lake, the upper part of Dog-Head Lake, the south coast of Lake
Winnipeg,
through Cedar Lake and past the mouth of the Saskatchawine, to Sturgeon
Lake; thence again, by portage, to the Missinipi, and through Black
Bear,
Primo's and Buffalo Lakes, to a range of high mountains running N. E.
and
S. W. — then taking Elk river to the Lake of the Hills — then passing
through
Slave river to Slave Lake — around the northern shore of this latter to
Mackenzie's river, and down this, lastly, to the Polar Sea — an immense
journey, during which he encountered dangers innumerable, and hardships
of the severest kind. In the whole of his course down Mackenzie's
river to its embouchure, he passed along the bottom of the eastern
declivity
of the Rocky Mountains, but never crossed these barriers. In the
spring of 1793, however, starting from Montreal and pursuing the route
of his first journey as far as the mouth of the Unjigah or Peace River,
he then turned off to the westward, up this stream, pushed through the
Mountains in latitude 56, then proceeded to the south until he struck a
river which he called the Salmon (now Frazer's) and following this,
finally
reached the Pacific in about the 40th parallel of N. L. The memorable expedition of captains
Lewis and
Clarke
was in progress during the years 1804, '5, and '6. In 1803, the
act
for establishing trading houses with the Indian tribes being about to
expire, [page 47:] some modifications of it (with an
extension of its views to the Indians
on the Missouri) were recommended to Congress by a confidential Message
from Mr. Jefferson, of January 18th. In order to prepare the way,
it was proposed to send a party to trace the Missouri to its source,
cross
the Rocky Mountains, and follow the best water communication which
offered
itself thence to the Pacific ocean. This design was fully carried
out; captain Lewis exploring (but not first "discovering" as Mr. Irving
relates) the upper waters of the Columbia river, and following the
course
of that stream to its embouchure. The head waters of the Columbia
were visited by Mackenzie as early as 1793. Coincident with the exploring tour of
Lewis and
Clarke
up the Missouri, was that of Major Zebulon M. Pike up the Mississippi,
which he succeeded in tracing to its source in Itasca Lake. Upon
his return from this voyage he penetrated, by the orders of government,
from the Mississippi westwardly, during the years 1805, '6, and '7, to
the head waters of the Arkansas (beyond the Rocky Mountains in latitude
40 N.) passing along the Osage and Kanzas rivers, and to the source of
the Platte. In 1810, Mr. David Thompson, a
partner of the
North
West Fur Company, set out from Montreal, with a strong party, to cross
the continent to the Pacific. The first part of the route was
that
of Mackenzie in 1793. The object was to anticipate a design of
Mr.
John Jacob Astor's — to wit, the establishment of a trading post at the
mouth of the Columbia. Most of his people deserted him on the
eastern
side of the mountains; but he finally succeeded in crossing the chain,
with only eight followers, when he struck the northern branch of the
Columbia,
and descended that river from a point much nearer its source than any
white
man had done before. In 1811, Mr. Astor's own remarkable
enterprise
was
carried into effect — at least so far as the joumey across the country
is concerned. As Mr. Irving has already made all readers well
acquainted
with the particulars of this journey, we need only mention it in
brief.
The design we have just spoken of. The track of the party (under
command of Mr. Wilson Price Hunt) was from Montreal, up the Utawas,
through
Lake Nipissing, and a succession of small lakes and rivers, to
Michilimackinac,
or Mackinaw — thence by Green Bay, Fox and Wisconsin rivers, to the
Prairie
du Chien — thence down the Mississippi to St. Louis — thence up the
Missouri,
to the village of the Arickara Indians, between the 46th and 47th
parallels
of N. latitude, and fourteen hundred and thirty miles above the mouth
of
the river — thence, bending to the southwest across the desert, over
the
mountains about where the head waters of the Platte and Yellowstone
take
rise, and, along the south branch of the Columbia, to the sea. Two
small return parties from this expedition made most perilous and
eventful
passages across the country. The travels of major Stephen H. Long
are the next
important ones in point of time. This gentleman, in 1823,
proceeded
to the source of St. Peter's river, to Lake Winnipeg, to the Lake of
the
Woods, etc., etc. Of the more recent journeys of Captain
Bonneville
and others it is scarcely necessary to speak, as they still dwell in
the
public memory. Captain B.'s adventures have been well related by
Mr. Irving. In 1832, he passed from Fort Osage across the Rocky
Mountains,
and spent nearly three years in the regions beyond. Within the
limits
of the United States there is very little ground which has not, of late
years, been traversed by the man of science, or the adventurer.
But
in those wide and desolate regions which lie north of our territory,
and
to the westward of Mackenzie's river, the foot of no civilized man,
with
the exception of Mr. Rodman and his very small party, has ever been
known
to tread. In regard to the question of the first passage
across
the Rocky Mountains, it will be seen, from what we have already said,
that
the credit of the enterprize should never have been given to Lewis and
Clarke, since Mackenzie succeeded in it, in the year 1793; and that in
point of fact, Mr. Rodman was the first who overcame those gigantic
barriers;
crossing them as he did in 1792. Thus it is not without good
reason
that we claim public attention for the extraordinary narrative which
ensues.
EDS.
G. M.
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